Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at West Metro Mommy Reads.

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words

that we’ve encountered in our reading.

If you want to play along, grab the button,

write a post and come back and add your link to Mr. Linky at Bermuda Onion!

I've been reading since I was two years old. My favorite friends in the real world have often been my fellow readers. It seems natural that I would adore book characters who are readers, too.

Here are some of my favorites:

The Old Lady Who Loved to Read

Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird

Jo March in Little Women

Anne of Green Gables

Matilda

Don Quixote

Klaus Baudelaire in A Series of Unfortunate Events

Emma Bovary

Charles Wallace in A Wrinkle in Time

Guy Montag in Fahrenheit 451

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

I'm headed to Yellowstone Park on Tuesday. I worked in the park forty years ago, so this is a highly anticipated return visit. I'll be gone for most of the next two weeks, but I hope to blog a bit while I'm off in the wilds of Wyoming. For now, I've reviewed everything I've read recently.

I can’t remember when I have ever read a book in which the characters all work out their difficulties by talking about their problems together and try...more

What are you reading today?!

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at West Metro Mommy Reads.

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words

that we’ve encountered in our reading.

If you want to play along, grab the button,

write a post and come back and add your link to Mr. Linky at Bermuda Onion!

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

It's easy to become insular. Insular, as in "ignorant of or uninterested in cultures, ideas, or peoples outside one's own experience." Insular, with synonyms of "narrow-minded, small-minded, inward-looking, parochial, provincial, small-town, shortsighted, hidebound, blinkered." Shudder. Certainly not what we readers want to be.Just as it's comfortable to stay in one's own small world, it's comfortable to stay in one's own small book world. But, oh, what we miss when we do.I joined a challenge several years ago to move me out of that comfort zone: Around the World in 80 Books. I'm close to my goal; I've read books from seventy-one different countries. During this challenge I've visited not only places with which I'm somewhat familiar like Canada and Mexico, but I've also traveled to places I had only the vaguest notion of, including Borneo and Iceland and Cameroon.If you are like me and want to get out of your cultural comfort zone, here are some books I recommend:

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevich (Rwanda)

The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera (New Zealand)

Independent People by Halldor Laxness (Iceland)

Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry (India)

An Evening Among Headhunters by Lawrence Millman (Tonga)

Dreamers by Knut Hamsun (Norway)

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park (Korea)

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany (Egypt)

Place Where the Sea Remembers by Sandra Benitez (Mexico)

The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu (Ethiopia)

“I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something."

---Edward Everett Hale

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.